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Fashion

Luggage belonging to Italian fashion designer Missoni washes up on tiny Caribbean island more than a month after his plane vanished

Saturday, 16 February 2013 12:09

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Police on the tiny island of Bonaire said Thursday that two pieces of luggage from a missing plane that was carrying the CEO of Italian fashion house Missoni has washed up on a local beach.

In Curacao, Bonaire police spokesman Hans Baltus confirmed that two bags found earlier this week on a rocky beach were from the missing plane carrying Vittorio Missoni, his wife and four others.

Baltus declined to provide information about the nametags on the battered bags, citing an ongoing investigation.

However, Missoni family friend Claudio Verna in Italy said that authorities in Bonaire phoned him Tuesday to tell him that two bags were found that belonged to the missing CEO. He said the bags were discovered Tuesday by a local newspaper reporter on the tiny island off Venezuela.

Baltus said police were in contact with Verna as a family representative.

The BN-2 Islander plane carrying Missoni and the others vanished shortly after takeoff on Jan. 4 from Los Roques, a tiny archipelago that is a dependency of Venezuela. It was destined for Caracas, the South American nation's capital.

Late last month, a bag belonging to a tourist who missed that flight washed up in nearby Curacao, which lies some 200 miles (320 kilometers) west of the resort islands of Los Roques. It was the first sign of debris from the missing plane.

From Italy, Verna said the Missoni family and friends of the missing couple are still hoping that the plane did not plunge into the ocean.

'You cannot exclude that someone could launch bags in the sea. We are not in the condition now to exclude any other option,' he said.

Verna said he will fly to Venezuela next week and try to advance plans to hire a boat to search for the missing plane.

Baltus said the two bags found in Bonaire are expected to be sent shortly to authorities in Venezuela.

Italy's air safety agency has said the pilot of the vanished plane had an expired medical fitness certificate and that the company operating the aircraft wasn't yet authorized to fly. However, the National Flight Safety Agency has said that neither factor is being blamed for the disappearance at this time.

Seven minutes after takeoff, the pilot reported that he was at 5,000 feet and 10 nautical miles from the Los Roques airport, according to the agency. The last radar readings showed the aircraft accelerating at 5,400 feet before it quickly lost altitude and speed, veering to the right until it disappeared from the radar.

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Marc Jacobs puts color back into NY Fashion Week

Tuesday, 12 February 2013 08:47

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Colors at this New York Fashion Week have often seemed tuned to the stormy weather outside, but Marc Jacobs is among those who've decided to bring sunshine -- even if only onto the catwalk, AFP reports.

Luxury perfume brands warn £20bn industry faces ruin as EU proposes ban on natural ingredients

Thursday, 20 December 2012 14:02

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Luxury perfume brands fear the European Union's new laws against allergens could severely curb or ban natural ingredients used in vintage best-sellers and put some perfume makers out of business.

But Brussels' proposed legislation — a draft will be unveiled early next year — is also causing a stir for another reason. It sheds light on the best-kept secret in the £20billion trade: many big brands have been tweaking their formulas for years.

'It is a taboo in the industry. People are scared to say anything about it,' said Fflur Roberts, head of luxury goods at market research company Euromonitor.

The brands most affected will be those which have been in the perfume industry for more than half a century, such as Dior, Chanel and Guerlain. All those fragrances use many natural ingredients and were created before scientists started looking into perfumes' potential health hazards.

Chanel's No.5, one of the world's best-selling perfumes and named after its creator's fifth trial, was created in 1921.

Chanel declined to comment on whether it has ever changed the formula of its world-famous perfume, as did Guerlain, Dior and luxury brand Hermes, which all make high-end perfumes using natural ingredients.

Most luxury perfume names do not want to disclose the fact that they have had to make tweaks to their scents for fear they could lose customers or damage their carefully nurtured luxury brand.

Perfume lovers, though, are hard to fool. 'Consumers know their perfume better than any expert,' said Jean Guichard, who heads the perfume school in Paris set up in 1946 by Swiss fragrance maker Givaudan.

'We say nothing to consumers, but they notice when their fragrance has been changed and they may decide to opt for another product. Brands need to be careful when they reformulate their perfumes as they can lose consumers.'

Until now, changes to perfume formulas have come as a result of increasingly severe restrictions imposed by the industry's self-regulatory body, the International Fragrance Association (IFRA).

'Most perfumes which are 20 years old or more will have already been reformulated several times because science has evolved and we want to ensure the safety of consumers,' said IFRA president Pierre Sivac.

If new, even stricter rules are adopted, hundreds of perfumes would have to be reformulated with synthetic allergen-free contents.

That, many in the industry fear, could threaten their business.

'If this law goes ahead I am finished, as my perfumes are all filled with these ingredients,' said Frederic Malle, who owns high-end perfume company Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle.

The impact on luxury perfume brands as a whole would, he said, be 'like an atomic explosion and we would not have the means to rebuild ourselves.'

Most fine perfumes are composed of a mix of natural ingredients and synthetic molecules.

Changing a scent can cost several hundred thousand euros depending on the complexity of the original formula, and perfume makers say that replacing natural with synthetic ingredients is rarely an improvement.

Many traditional essences that perfume creators consider core to their craft have been blacklisted in recent decades. Birch tar oil was removed from Guerlain's Shalimar several decades ago because it was thought to be a cancer risk.

Clove oil and rose oil, which contain a component called eugenol, and lavender, which contains linalool, may only be used in limited quantities in case of allergies.

And oakmoss, one of the most commonly used raw materials because of its rich, earthy aroma and ability to 'fix' a perfume to make it last longer, has been increasingly restricted because of worries about skin sensitivity.

That means perfumes like Shalimar, Chanel's No. 5, Dior's Eau Sauvage and Poison, Yves Saint Laurent's Opium and Cacharel's Anais Anais are only a shadow of their original, olfactory selves, according to industry experts.

'Eau Sauvage was a real [masterpiece] in its original form,' retired perfume-maker Pierre Bourdon, who created Dior's Dolce Vita and Yves Saint Laurent's Kouros, said of the 1966 scent. 'It used to be very green and fresh. Today, it has been replaced by something softer and duller.'

He contends the scent has been stripped of furocoumarins, a kind of organic chemical compound produced by plants like bergamot that can cause dark spots on the skin when exposed to the sun.

Mr Bourdon said he still wore Eau Sauvage because it reminded him of his father, Rene, who as deputy head of Dior perfumes in the 1960s and 1970s supervised the creation of the perfume.

If the industry largely got away with quietly tweaking its fragrances up till now, however, experts say that will be impossible if Europe backs the proposals aimed at wiping allergenic substances from the perfume-makers' palettes altogether.

Brigitte Aubert, a 68-year-old Parisian interior decorator, gave up Shalimar in the 1980s after developing an allergy to it.

'My neck became all red but I continued wearing Shalimar for a long time. It was part of my identity, I couldn't just give it up,' she said. 'It reminded me of those carefree days of Paris in the 1960s.'

Aubert is one of an estimated five million to 15 million people, or one to three per cent of the EU population who are allergic or potentially allergic to natural ingredients contained in fine perfumes, according to a report published in July by the Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety (SCCS).

Patrick Saint-Yves, president of the French Society of Perfume Creators (SFP), is furious about the recommendation.

'I simply find that there is a huge contradiction,' Saint-Yves said. 'We encourage the use of many essential oils such as lavender in aromatherapy for massages, but we want to ban it in perfumes.

Shops continue to sell alcohol and cigarettes which do much more harm.'

Part of the problem is the secrecy surrounding perfumes. Most perfume brands are reluctant to label their products.

In 2005, the EU passed a law in 2005 forcing perfume brands to label any of 26 potentially allergenic ingredients. The brands now list those ingredients — but in Latin. Now the SCCS is proposing to extend that list to more than 100 potential allergens.

Europe is not the only region to look more closely at the impact of fragrance. Earlier this year Republican lawmaker Michele Peckham from New Hampshire to ban state employees who have contact with members of the public from wearing strong fragrances.

The bill did not pass, but there are some hospitals in the U.S. where they have introduced bans on using perfumes.

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Ex-first lady Bruni backs gay marriage, models for Vogue

Thursday, 29 November 2012 15:23

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Former French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy backed controversial plans for France to legalise gay marriage in an interview with Vogue that sees the 44-year-old return to her supermodel roots, AFP reported.

In an interview appearing in the magazine's December issue with a 20-page photo shoot reminiscent of Bruni-Sarkozy's time as a top model in the 1990s, she admitted she disagreed with her husband on the question of gay marriage and adoption.

"I am rather in favour of gay marriage and adoption, I have a lot of friends -- women and men -- who are in this situation and I see nothing unstable or perverse in families with homosexual parents," she said.

French President Francois Hollande, who defeated Sarkozy in a May presidential election, is pushing plans to legalise same-sex marriage and adoption despite fierce opposition from Catholics and rightwing groups, including most of Sarkozy's UMP party.

Bruni-Sarkozy refused to answer questions about her husband's future political career, saying only: "It was a beautiful adventure, but today I just want to go back to being a citizen like any other." Bruni-Sarkozy, a model and singer whose fourth album will be released next spring, married the divorced Sarkozy in 2008.

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Paris Hilton’s new Mecca store causes controversy

Thursday, 22 November 2012 22:10

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U.S. celebrity and hotel heiress Paris Hilton expanded her handbags and accessories franchise to the Holy city of Mecca, prompting growing criticism on social networking sites.

Hilton announced the news on her Twitter account Thursday. “Loving my beautiful new store that just opened at Mecca Mall in Saudi Arabia!,” she tweeted.

But not everyone joined her in the excitement, as some people took to the social networking website to voice their displeasure with the debut.

One person replied to her tweet saying, “R u kidding?” Another comment, “Saudi claim there are other ways to allow for pilgrims, & if religiosity is of such importance, why is @ParisHilton being allowed a store in Makkah?”

Another tweep questioned Hilton’s style of products and remarked, “that’s it? That’s why ppl are not buying it? Not coz she is a porn star who happens to be rich enough to have her own brand and open it in Mecca?”

Meanwhile, Hilton boasted the opening of her store in Mecca, tweeting “This is the 5th store in Saudi Arabia, and store number 42 in total! So proud to keep growing my brand!”

Makkah Mall posted an image of Hilton’s store on its Facebook page, but not all comments were spiteful, with some users pointing out the store’s opening from a capitalist point of view rather than a socio-religious angle.

One user stated, “Why the attack? This is a global brand found everywhere, whether it was in an Arab country or a European one.”

Another user said “Simply put, those who see this is a Western invasion of the Arab world shouldn’t be buying nor marketing their products. But to reject this concept and at the same time, buy all European and Western products is completely hypocritical.”

Hilton followed in her hotelier grandfather’s footsteps by adding entrepreneurship to her resume, but remains notorious for her wayward lifestyle, including brief stints in prison and a leaked intimate home movie.

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